Torture, sexual violence, and solitary confinement... Methods used by the Anti-Corruption Commission in Iraq to extract confessions

An investigation by The Washington Post revealed that the government's anti-corruption committee in Iraq used solitary confinement, torture and sexual violence to extract confessions from senior Iraqi officials and businessmen.

In an investigation published by the American newspaper, it was shown that this campaign was based on a series of night raids that received wide media coverage in late 2020 on the homes of public figures accused of corruption, which were conducted under the authority of the Permanent Committee to Investigate Corruption Cases and Important Crimes, known as Committee 29;

It was headed by Lieutenant General Ahmed Taha Hashem (Abu Ragheef), who was known in Iraq as "The Night Visitor".

But what happened to those arrested behind closed doors was much darker, as the heinous methods of a security institution were used, and then Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi pledged to address its violations.

The newspaper drew its information from more than 20 interviews with the detainees - who spoke on condition of anonymity - showing a picture of a process characterized by abuse and humiliation to obtain their signatures on pre-written confessions instead of accountability for acts of corruption.

As one of the former detainees recalled, "They tortured us with electric shocks, suffocated us with plastic bags, hung us from the ceiling by our hands, and stripped us of our clothes."

Al-Kazemi pledged upon his accession to power to combat corruption and fight abuses in prisons (communication sites)

The newspaper's investigation stated that allegations that the process was marred by violations became a secret among diplomats in Baghdad last year, but the international community did not do much to follow up on the allegations and the Prime Minister's Office downplayed the importance of these allegations.

Although a parliamentary committee first exposed the allegations of torture in 2021 and Iraqi media have intermittently raised the issue, this is the most comprehensive attempt yet to investigate the allegations and document the extent of abuse.

According to estimates by the country's Parliamentary Transparency Committee, Iraq has lost more than $320 billion to corruption since 2003 after the US invasion led to the formation of a political system with consensus among parties that divide state resources to fund patronage networks and enrich their members.

Most of the new prime ministers have announced initiatives to tackle corruption, but these have often been used to discredit political opponents rather than address the problem.

Officials arrested under the 29 Commission were often seen as easy targets without strong allies to defend them, and allegations of corruption dogged some of those arrested for years, but the secrecy of the commission and the opacity of the legal process make it impossible to know how many arrests were lawful, and some arrests appeared motivated. political

It targeted individuals with links to factions that threatened the political gains of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, one of Kadhimi's main backers.

According to the newspaper;

“There is an element of political blackmail at play in this,” said a senior Iraqi official who served in Kadhimi’s government. “You attack someone’s power base and commercial power in a particular government agency to not only charge him and expose corruption, but also to make room for your team in the future.”

Al-Kazemi came to power in May 2020 with the escalation of tensions between the United States and Iran over Iraq.

Where he won the support of Washington and the international community as a figure who promised to confront the factions allied with Tehran.

Most of those in Al-Kazemi's inner circle left Baghdad since he left office in the wake of a new corruption scandal involving one of his senior employees that shook Iraq, while Al-Kazemi's whereabouts are still unknown.

A former senior adviser to Al-Kadhimi, speaking on his behalf, who declined to be identified, said that Al-Kadhimi "categorically denied" the allegations of abuse, adding that "the previous government adhered to the highest standards of human rights and that distorting the record of facts would enable some of the most violent and corrupt criminals in Iraq to escape punishment." Pointing out that the committee also targeted individuals with links to the factions.” Abu Ragheef refused to comment on this story.

Thousands of Iraqis are subjected to torture in the absence of accountability (Al-Jazeera - archive)

Torture and sexual violence

Human rights associations say, according to the newspaper, that cases of enforced disappearance and torture have been widespread for a long time inside the centers run by the Iraqi security forces.

Upon taking office, Al-Kazemi pledged to investigate violations as they appeared.

But families of detainees say they were sometimes unable to find out the whereabouts of their relatives for several weeks while the bulk of the alleged abuses took place, and former detainees say they were held in small cells inside a facility at Baghdad airport run by the US-trained Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service and usually used To interrogate and detain terrorism suspects.

The newspaper quoted Iraqi counterterrorism officials as saying that their US counterparts had raised concerns about the use of detention centers for non-terrorism interrogations.

In response to the question whether the coalition forces were aware of the violations, or expressed their concerns to their Iraqi colleagues;

A US Central Command spokesman said he had no information to provide.

Former detainees and Iraqi officials say additional abuses took place in an underground prison in Baghdad's Green Zone.

A man arrested by the Commission during the beginning of the round of arrests narrated how he was tortured for 13 days after being interrogated about bribes and his money, and when he refused to give them 1.5 million dollars, they continued to torture him.

In some cases the accounts are corroborated by medical reports and photographs taken in custody that the newspaper reviewed, which appear to show injuries consistent with the abuse described, and in other cases detainees said they were denied access to medical records to substantiate their allegations.

The authors note the consistency of the detainees' horrific stories, most of whom said they were blindfolded, subjected to repeated electric shocks, beaten with sticks, waterboarded and stripped naked, and at least two men told their families and legal representatives that they were sexually abused.

One detainee described seeing the man return to his cell with his leg swollen and his fingers broken: "He was crawling like a baby, he couldn't even walk."

A multi-party parliamentary committee recognized the credibility of the torture allegations and gained access to the airport detention center in December 2020, but the committee said in a report published in March of the following year that its requests to meet the detainees in private had been denied.

The report stated that the investigators were unable to meet the detainee, Jawad Abdul-Kadhim Alwan Al-Karawi, deputy director of Najaf Airport, and his relatives, his lawyer, and 3 former detainees said that the 54-year-old man was subjected to severe torture, and according to the testimony of one of the former detainees, the effects of torture on his body were so many that they They were unable to produce it at the time of the parliamentary committee visit, and it is detailed in reports from the forensic examination that the El-Karawy family shared copies of with The Washington Post.

In Mansour's case;

The official, who died in August 2021 three weeks after his arrest, had his family never learned what happened to him in detention.

The protests that Iraq has witnessed in recent years were the main demand for combating corruption (Al-Jazeera)

Attention to extract money

The anti-corruption campaign was led by Abu Ragheef, a well-known figure in the Iraqi Interior Ministry as well as the main interlocutor with Western governments and the United Nations throughout Kadhimi's rule, and he is known for his tough action against crime.

The newspaper talked about the arrest of the head of the Iraqi Pension Fund, Ahmed Al-Saadi, and the head of the electronic payment company, Bahaa Abdel-Hussein, in September 2020. The news was met with enthusiasm among the Iraqi media as well as by Western think tanks, but after months their cases faded from view after they Both were convicted of stealing billions of Iraqi dinars.

Official figures indicate that Committee 29 opened 156 cases before the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional and was resolved in March of this year, resulting in the conviction of 19 people, 7 of whom were former senior officials, but it was not clear how many were accused of corruption.

Of the 12 active cases Washington Post reporters tracked, 9 men were still in prison and 3 have been released.

Colleague Sajjad Jiyad at the "Century International" think tank in New York expressed the weakness of the committee's achievements, saying that most of the Al-Kazemi government's concern focused on extracting money rather than actually pursuing corruption.

The newspaper said that the total amount of money seized by the committee was not publicly announced, but former detainees or members of their families said that the suspects were told at the beginning of the investigation that they might be released if money was paid or the transfer of assets, which totaled in many cases, was signed. Sometimes millions of dollars, and it is not clear how many were able to pay for their release, and the fate of their money.

Although the United States has been a major player in Iraqi politics since the 2003 invasion, Iraqi leaders have at times exploited the ignorance or indifference of allies in Washington by using promises of reform to persecute their opponents.

Although the detainees' families raised allegations of abuse continuously throughout 2021, and exchanged reports with the United Nations Mission and Western embassies in Baghdad, Al-Kadhimi denied the allegations during private conversations with Western diplomats and UN officials, or said that he would act if there was evidence of wrongdoing.

One of the prominent human rights officials in Iraq, Ali al-Bayati, raised allegations of abuse on an Iraqi TV show in 2020. He was sued for defamation a year later, forcing him to leave the country to avoid falling under the law.

He pleaded for help with his case but received little support.

In the final months of Kadhimi’s premiership, judicial officials announced that the largest corruption scandal in Iraq’s history had occurred under his watch, enriching politicians and businessmen of all political stripes. The theft of nearly $2.5 billion from state coffers has been dubbed “ Theft of the century.